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Our Gospel today is from Luke and Jesus is presented at his most outspoken and challenging. He presents us with stark contrasts. First the poor and then the rich. Notice unlike in Matthew’s Gospel he doesn’t say “blessed are the poor in spirit.” He is much more direct than that. He says: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.

I want you to imagine that you’re having a bad day. Not the kind of bad day where you lose your keys, leave your phone on the bus, forget to post the red-letter bill payment and spill coffee all over your clothes the moment you get to work. I mean the kind of bad day when the frailty of existence all crowds in on you

‘Outside my house is a cactus plant / They call the century tree / Only once in a hundred years / It flowers gracefully / And you never know when it will bloom’

Funeral Address for Anne Duffin by Revd Richard Carter, given on 31 January at St Michael’s Chiswick. 

It was 1986, and I was in northern Israel. A few weeks before I’d asked my uncle where it was that my grandparents had lived when they were there in the early fifties. It was that address that I held in my hand as I wandered around Haifa one August morning.

Here’s a story I’m sure you know. Once when a Lion was asleep a little Mouse began running up and down upon him. This soon awakened the Lion, who placed his huge paw upon the Mouse and opened his big jaws to swallow him. ‘Pardon, O King,’ cried the little Mouse, ‘forgive me this time. I shall never forget it